I've only seen "for all intensive purposes" used once; this was when a
friend in college asked me to proofread her paper. I laughed rather harder than was perhaps polite, and she rescinded the request that I proofread the
rest of it.

Heehee! It sounds as if
she should have
let you continue!

From Sue Duffy:

While I did know that carols were originally dances, I didn't know they
were single jigs. Traditionally, Celtic single jigs are in an unusual time signature of 12/8, and in Ireland, are also known as Kerry slides.
Single jigs are considered "old fashioned" in today's repertoire of Irish dances.

"Traditionally"?
Well, it all depends on what you mean by "traditional". The jig
is not an indigenous Irish dance and was imported from England where jigs
(single and double) are still a mainstay of Morris and Country dancing.
Now we come to think of it, aren't all the "traditional" Irish
dances from somewhere else? The jig is from England, the reel from
Scotland, the polka from Czechoslovakia, the mazurka from Poland, and the waltz
is from Austria.

We must also take issue with you
in the matter of meter. Yes, Kerry slides are usually written in 12/8 but
there are plenty of Irish single jigs written in a 6/8 time signature... as a
cursory glance at "O'Neill's" will reveal.

From Ethan D. Frolich:

While driving around town the other day, I
happened to pass The Fiddler's Green Pub and noticed the use of the one of the missing letters from
Issue 142. I'm not sure if it's used appropriately, but check it out for
yourself in the attached image. If you're interested in the pub, you can take a virtual tour on their
website at: http://www.fiddlersgreenorlando.com/

Hmmm! While that letter
does, superficially, resemble the letter yogh we suspect that, in this
case, it is the letter G as written in uncial script. (Hence also the
funny n.)

The uncial alphabet is
appropriate (and preferred) when writing in the Irish (a.k.a. Gaelic) language
but we feel it out of place here.

For those who hadn't caught the
allusion, Fiddler's Green was a legendary paradise - the sailors'
equivalent of "the Big Rock-Candy Mountain".

From
Ray Adams:

I enjoyed the selection of Holiday related words. But then, I've never found an issue that hasn't got many
intriguing bits of information scattered throughout. My particular interest is in the word
church.

Not really seeking to enter the thousand year debate over the etymology of our English word church, as I
readily "take your word for it", I only note that the Latin ecclesia comes from the Greek
ekklesia. The word ekklesia has a church context predating that of the Latin ecclesia and a Greek usage broader than the biblical
literature that supports the adoption of that word by the biblical writers to describe what we now call a church.
In classical Greek ekklesia meant an assembly of citizens summoned by the crier. The
ekklesia then, are those "called out" of their general life routines to assemble to worship the Lord. By biblical usage of
ekklesia, this is the church. In fact, the English translators used the word church for
ekklesia. Now, whether there is an etymological connection between church and
ekklesia I would leave to the 1000 year debate.

From Andrew Charles:

I remember reading quite a detailed analysis of the origins of
church. It may have been in the OED, but I'm afraid I don't recall. As you have noted the
word is strictly Germanic and Slavic in use, and the only common origin that is certain is West Germanic. Unfortunately it is widely considered to be
non-native, the question being, from where was it borrowed? The Greek kyriakos doma (Lord's house) is most favored, but in Greek the word for
church is almost always ekklesia (assembly). Even the Goths adopted the Greek word. I believe there is only one citing of
kyriakon (or perhaps late Greek kyrikon) referring to a church, and that was apparently far from any region the Germanic tribes had contact with. The same question has to be
asked - if church is from Greek, then why wasn't it used in Greek, or Gothic or Latin, or any other language which adopted Christianity and its terms from
Greek-speakers (albeit Jewish Greek-speakers). If the word is from Gothic kelikn, then presumably it was applied by other Germanic tribes to church
buildings with their "towers".

Church must be the single most difficult
word in English etymology. Debate has raged for centuries and we suspect
that little more is to be said.

From a Reader:

You ask "Isn't it funny how people continue to say things that make
absolutely no sense?"

The evening star ("Thee-evening-star" or " The evening star" )??
An apple or a apple?? I know, in French, a vowel at the end of a word falls off when
confronted by another vowel (as in d'accord = De + accord.)

I heard there's a new law in town: it's now OK to use "a" when preceding
a vowel. Is this true? And, besides sounding better, why do we add the "n" or stretch "the" to "thee" before a vowel??

No, it's not ok to
use a as an article for apple. Nor do we like
hearing "an historical account". While the "n"
in an originated in the same manner that the British
"intrusive r" did, for ease and speed in pronunciation*, that
"n" has been standardized.

* It's easier to
say "an apple" than "a <glottal stop> apple",
just as it is easier to say "America<r> is large" than it
is to say "America <glottal stop> is large".

What's a glottal
stop? Say "uh-oh", and the closing of the vocal cords
between the uh and the oh, blocking off the flow of air, and
then releasing the vocal cords suddenly, is a glottal stop. Another
example is that of a Cockney speaker saying butter as "bu?er"
(? is the universal symbol for a glottal stop). That substitution of
a t sound with a glottal stop is know as t-glottaling.